How much pollution does a car produce?

While exhaust gases such as nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide are pretty nasty in their own right it’s the CO2 emitted by cars that contributes towards global warming. Roughly, for every litre of petrol you burn, your car emits 2.4kg of CO2! The average motorist who drives 20 000km a year will therefore emit anything between 2000kg and 7000kg of CO2 a year.

7000 kilograms of CO2 a year for a standard driver... that's insane...

I have never been huge into the environment and the like but that figure is quite shocking, luckily I ride a bike so I don't need to feel guilty on the way home

I wonder if that figure goes up for city dwellers though, while you may only drive 20 km's home it takes you over an hour due to traffic.. the whole time you are pumping out pollution...

This is really interesting. The values are correct as far as I've been able to find out.

However, one liter of petrol weighs about 0.75kg. How in the world is this converted to 2.4kg of CO2?

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It's obviously to do with something like CH-chain + O2 = Energy + CO where the oxygen's mass gets added to the mass of the CH-chains. I wouldn't have thought the effect would be that big though...

Last edited by Rkootknir; 01-11-2007 at 12:42 PM.

Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Global warming? It's nothing more than a natural cycle. Earth goes through cycles. It had an ice age, now it's warmer. It's getting hotter on Mars too...there are no humans there, and as far as Bush knows (hah)...there are no marsmen driving around in Petrol vehicles.

The solution to the earth's problems with global warming, greenhouse gases etc is rather simple; we need to stop breeding. There is simply too many people on this plant for this planet to sustain. I think the saying should be changed from 'breed like bunnies' to 'breed like Neanderthals humans'.

Oh yes, I am a believer now...it all points to the logical conclusion that global warming is a man made phenomenan...Hold on man, I've got to go purchase a skateboard...Lol.

That's all very nice, that still doesn't explain how it is that Mars is facing the exact same variation as earth. Perhaps I should do your research for you, what is it that they used to 'refute" that Russian scientist who brought about this Mars issue?

Ah yes, the way that Mars "orbits and tilts" is the reason for it's temperature variations...and that earth has a bigger moon and that it's orbit and tilt is far less than that of Mars..and that's why the two are not suffering the same source of heat increase. Despite the fact that well earth does variate from it's course every 20 - 100,000 years...and that they cannot explain why it is that both Mars and Earth are between ice ages. They consider it a coincidence.

Scientists do not even understand most of natures complexities and they want to tell me about the greenhouse effect? It doesn't definitively know how these substances interact with each other and other substances.

Global warming is the modern "Nuclear threat". In the 60's it was the thing to be scared of, the end of mankind. Today it's global warming. I find it funny how so many people can run amock and consider purchasing electric vehicles to save earth, but they don't have the same conviction when it comes to their own people. Take Roo here, he's biting another myth...earth is over populated. Such a good idea...bring on abortion!. Contradiction that is, in one sense they fear global warming and they don't want to scortch to death, in another they cause extinction by lack of breeding. Way to go....

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Hardly a refutation of the mainstream consensus of anthropogenic climate change. I'm open to alternative explanations for the climate change that's going on - as long as its supported by the scientific community. At this time the vast majority of climate scientists see man-made greenhouse gases as the only viable explanation for climate change. Until such a time as a theory comes along that starts to cause a meaningful impact on the debate (coz right now there's no debate at all, that's how certain they are), there's really not much to discuss.

Further, Roo! has a point - the earth can't sustain the number of people tha are now living on it in the manner in which they're living. Nobody said anything about the extinction of the species through not breeding, all Roo suggested was that we don't breed as much.

*edit* Here and here is some info on The Great Global Warming Swindle *edit*